


scream together songs unsung

by everytuesday



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Episode: s03e11 Mystery Spot, Multi, Time Travel Fix-It, although we do explore the nature of destiel in act 2, will add pairings and characters as they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everytuesday/pseuds/everytuesday
Summary: Dean dies and Sam wakes up in a motel room twelve years earlier.[it's the time travel fix-it fic we've all been shitposting about on tumblr]
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 71
Kudos: 353





	1. mystery spot

**Author's Note:**

> title from heat of the moment, naturally.

When it happens, there’s nothing remarkable or cosmic to it, just a hook in a barn and a misplaced step at the wrong moment. It’s the mundanity of it all that terrifies Sam. Dean is dying in front of him and they’re saying goodbyes, muttering their _Let me go’_ s and _I will absolutely not_ ’s, clinging to each other like they have since they were kids.

But they’ve depowered God, killed every big bad in the books and a few that weren’t. All that’s left is the inevitable, hopeless truth that one of them will always leave the other alone. It’s the kind of ending they’ve raced toward, foot-to-the-pedal, their whole lives, isn’t it?

The barn is cold this late at night, this late in the year, but the chill creeping up Sam’s spine and the numbness in his fingers aren’t from that.

_Jack, I know you said you were hands-off..._

Sam can’t get through the rest of the prayer, attention fixated on the lingering evidence that there’s still time for a miracle because he isn’t gone yet: Dean’s hand resting lightly over Sam’s, their foreheads pressed together, his breathing— becoming more erratic with every passing moment. But he’s still talking and Sam is trying to catch everything he’s saying, drawing out these last moments in case he doesn’t get another chance. 

Dean’s hand slips away from his and Sam tenses to catch him when he falls forward. He’s going to bury his brother again, maybe for good, maybe this is it. Show’s over folks, time to—

_“Heat of the moment.”_

Sam’s eyes snap open and he jolts upright in the motel bed.

_“Telling me what your heart meant.”_

“Rise and shine, Sammy!” Dean gives him a shit-eating grin from the bed next to his.

“What?” is all Sam manages to sputter out.

“Oh come on, you love this song and you know it,” Dean reaches across to crank up the volume on the shitty motel alarm clock next to Sam’s bed. It crackles with the strain of trying to play Asia loud enough to satisfy Dean.

Twelve years have melted away in an instant. The Dean across from him can’t be in his thirties yet, much less his forties. He’s still grinning, lip-synching to the song now and pointing a finger at Sam, taunting him to join in.

“What the fuck?” Sam breathes and Dean lets out a low whistle.

“Woah, big boy words from Sammy. You okay, dude?”

“I don’t know how this happened,” he hears himself saying out loud. “You were— This can’t be real. This is some messed up... ” This is Chuck again somehow. Or a psychotic break. Or both; Chuck probably would love an ending with Sam in a padded room, finally crushed under the weight of the hero’s journey or whatever Joseph Campbell bullshit he gets his inspiration from.

“You have a weird dream or what?” Dean’s voice breaks through the fog of Sam’s thoughts.

He realizes he’s still gaping at Dean, which is probably going to start freaking him out soon if it hasn’t already. If it even _is_ Dean.

But if it isn’t, and this is all an illusion, then why bother going all the way back to the time loop in— what, 2008? It’s been so long since he’s been here. Surely there were more interesting moments of his life to trap him in than this.

“Earth to Sam?” Dean calls. His voice used to be lighter, Sam realizes. He’s still so _young_. “You gonna keep creepy-staring at me or…?”

Maybe playing along is the best strategy here. Either he’s lost his mind, in which case there’s nothing to be done. Or this is some monster-based illusion and he can figure his way out of it. Either way, freaking out Dean— or not-Dean, whichever the case ends up being— is probably the best place to start. Also, keeping him alive.

“Sorry,” Sam manages finally, “Uh, yeah it was a dream. I’ll be okay.”

“You sure? Because that was fucking weird.”

“It was a _really_ bad dream,” Sam tries to sound convincing.

Dean probably doesn’t buy it entirely, but he gives Sam a shrug and moves to finish getting ready in the bathroom.

Sam’s hand drifts up to his hair; it’s not much shorter than how he wears it now (or is it _wore it then?_ Or _will wear it in the future?_ ) though his bangs haven’t grown all the way out yet. It feels like he remembers it. If it’s an illusion, something should be off, but the scratchy motel sheets feel normal too, and the still-blaring radio. Although, will he even be able to tell what _off_ is?

Once, he’d had every variable of this day memorized, but it’s buried under a century of hell trauma and another decade of exhaustion on top of it. The best he can do is go through the motions and try to avoid everything in this town that’s designed to kill Dean.

“Let’s leave,” Sam decides aloud. Quickest way to push the question and figure out if this really is still that same loop or if something else is going on.

“Huh?” Dean leans out of the bathroom to squint at him, mouth full of toothpaste.

“We should get out of town. I don’t think there’s a case here.”

“Bullshit,” Dean says around the toothpaste. “This is exactly our kind of thing.”

Dean holds up a finger and steps back into the bathroom. Sam hears the water turn on and off before Dean emerges again, toothpaste-free and serious now, “We drove like nine hours to get here, Sam. We drove to _Florida_ for this. Why you backing out now?”

Sam starts grabbing his few belongings and throwing them in a duffle bag, “I don’t feel good about this case.”

“Is this about your dream? Was it psychic stuff?”

“Something like that,” Sam mutters, zipping up his bag and throwing it over his shoulder.

“Wait, so you _have_ been having psychic dreams again?” Dean blinks, concern and irritation edging into his voice all at once. “And you weren’t going to mention it?”

“I don’t know _what_ I was dreaming,” Sam says. “But I just have this feeling we need to leave. We can call someone else to check it out if you want, but I really don’t think there’s a case here.”

“Then where do you want to go?”

There’s no bunker yet. They don’t have a home base except— “Bobby’s. I need a place to think and lay low for a few days.”

“That’s 2000 miles from here. You want us to ditch a case and drive for two days, just so you can _think_?” the incredulity in Dean’s tone is probably warranted, even if it makes Sam want to scream. “You gotta give me more details, man.

“I don’t know what’s going on. I’m trying to figure it out, I just need you to trust me and I need us to not be in this town.”

Dean frowns, gears turning in his head and Sam’s not sure he has the energy to keep arguing with him.

“Okay. Fine. But after we get to Bobby’s and you ‘think,’” Dean does accompanying air quotes, “you gotta lay it all out for me.”

“Deal,” Sam says.

So they leave. Dean complains loudly about missing breakfast on the way out, but he drives them away all the same and nothing stops them. Sam watches the town disappear in the rear-view mirror and still isn’t convinced they’re out of the loop, but this feels like a good sign.

Dean cranks up the classic rock. Sam reaches into his jacket pocket for his phone and because this is 2008, he comes out with a flip phone . Sam can’t remember exactly when smartphones became a thing, but he and Dean were always several years behind the curve. He’ll have to fix that, if this ends up being more permanent.

Which it won’t be because he’s going to get back or wake up or whatever it is he needs to do and then he’s going to save Dean. Fuck it, he’ll figure out how to bring Cas back too and the three of them and Eileen will have a beach day. Margaritas for everyone.

“What are you smiling about?” Dean asks and Sam jumps.

“Nothing. Just thinking.”

“Thinking,” Dean repeats. “I’m going to get real sick of that word soon, aren’t I?”

“Sorry. Uh, thanks for trusting me,” Sam says. “I’m gonna be tripping out for a while, probably, so sorry in advance too.”

“Is this a ‘stop me from going to hell’ plan?”

This Dean hasn’t been to hell yet. No wonder he seems so damn chipper in comparison. They haven’t even broken into the top 10 greatest trauma hits yet.

“Maybe,” Sam says. “I don’t know yet.”

Dean’s eyes widen and Sam realizes how convoluted this must be getting from Dean’s perspective. He doesn’t have a good lie and on the off chance Dean _is_ the real Dean and he’s been dragged back to 2008, he’s not sure he wants to play the “I’m from 12 years in the future and things just get worse from here” card already.

They go through two tanks of gas before they stop to eat lunch, pick up snacks for dinner, and switch drivers. All seemingly without incident.

They’ve just driven through Nashville a little after ten when Sam glances to see Dean slouched over in the passenger seat with his eyes closed. Blind panic takes over and Sam doesn’t realize he’s started swerving until he’s halfway into the other lane and a horn is blaring at them.

“Jesus, Sammy!” Dean shouts, awake and decidedly not dead.

Sam overcorrects in the midst of his panic and the car veers back into the right lane and then keeps going right until they’re fully off road and also, if the way Sam’s stomach has gone into freefall is an indication, heading down a ditch.

There’s a loud crunch and airbags being deployed and Sam’s head whips back against the headrest too hard. He sits there, gasping and trying to get his bearings. Adrenaline has kicked in and his body feels like a live wire, ready for fight or flight. The passenger side door creaks open and Dean is scrambling out of the car and around to the other side, wrenching open Sam’s door.

“You okay?”

Sam nods numbly. Dean offers him a hand out and Sam takes it to pull himself out of the car. There’s no sign of blood or bruises on Dean. In fact, as soon as Sam is upright, he seems exclusively concerned with examining the crunched-in front of the Impala.

“He did a number on you, huh, Baby?” Dean whispers to the car, then turns to glare daggers at Sam, “You fucked up my car!”

“But you’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine, but what the hell was that?”

“I thought you died,” Sam says and Dean makes an irritated scoffing sound.

“Oh my god, are you guys okay?” a woman’s voice calls from the road, only a few feet up from where the Impala landed. It’s hard to make out details, but she sounds young. “You almost hit that car ahead of us and then we saw you go off the road.”

“We’re fine,” Dean calls back. “Just need a tow.”

A man appears next to her, “There’s no reception out here; we can drive you guys into town.”

“Thanks,” Dean waves, then turns to Sam, “We’re gonna fix this and then you’re gonna tell me what's going on with you, okay?”

He claps Sam on the shoulder and starts making his way up the short incline to the road.

The couple on the road introduce themselves, but Sam will have forgotten their names by the next morning. He and Dean cram together in the back of their beat-up Honda Civic and Sam can see Dean biting his tongue to avoid making a comment. It's a short, quiet drive and they're dropped off at a motel in the next town ahead. Dean calls Bobby for a hunter-friendly towing company in Tennessee, then calls said towing company, all while glaring daggers at Sam. By the time Dean’s satisfied with the Impala’s temporary new home in a scrap yard until he can start fixing it tomorrow, it’s close to midnight.

Dean collapses into the motel bed as soon as they get back to their the room, but Sam sits quietly for a moment, his own phone clutched in hand, watching as 11:59 turns to 12:00. 

“It’s Wednesday,” Sam says.

Dean cracks open one eye, “And yesterday was Tuesday and tomorrow is Thursday. Good job, kiddo, you know your days of the week.”

“No, it’s Wednesday. I didn’t think we’d make it to today,” Sam says. Dean lifts his head up slightly from the pillow to raise his eyebrows at Sam, and Sam realizes he has to say something at least halfway true, “You died in my dream. It was like this time loop, where you died in a bunch of ways and the Trickster— he’s not dead, by the way— was doing it to teach us some lesson about fate. Our destinies. Something like that.”

Dean groans and pushes himself up into a sitting position, “Was that the only part of your dream?”

Sam shakes his head, “No, there was a lot of really vague stuff too. I’m still trying to work through it.”

“All this psychic stuff goes back to Azazel though, right? You shouldn’t be messing with it.”

“Believe me, I didn’t do it on purpose.” Yet.

“Okay.”

“The last thing I remember, in the dream, you’d been stabbed on this piece of rebar in a barn and it felt… It felt real. It felt like that was just _it_.”

“Dean Winchester, in the barn, with a pipe. Was I killed by a haunted game of Clue?”

“I’m just glad you’re here.”

“I’ll be here as long as I can,” Dean says. “We'll keep trying to figure something out.”

It occurs to him that if this is real, maybe he shouldn’t try to figure out how to get back. There’s nothing there, but here? This is before things get really bad. There’s no angels and half the number of demons. And he knows more than he did twelve years ago. There’s people he can save, mistakes he can fix.

“Yeah, we will,” Sam says. “Because I’m not going to let you go to hell.”


	2. jus in bello

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's memory is not quite as good as he thinks it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel the need to preface this chapter by saying this is pretty much the only episode rewrite I'm planning on doing that more or less follows the original episode beat for beat. everything else will be quite a bit different (especially once we get to seasons 4/5), this episode just happened to work best as is for what I want to do with Sam's story in this fic.
> 
> so if you're anything like me and you find straight up episode rewrites kind of irritating, rest assured this is the only one I'm planning to do and I tried really hard to shake it up and avoid lifting dialogue straight from the episode as much as possible.

Dean spends most of the next day at the scrap yard fixing the Impala, still resentful about the crash, which leaves Sam to wander around the town on foot.

There’s an electronic store a block away from the motel, where he immediately buys an iPhone. Upon getting back, it becomes apparent exactly how far smart phone technology has come in the last decade, but it beats the flip phone by a mile.

It makes him think of Charlie and her tablet. And then the fact that she’s _alive_ right now and if he wants her to stay that way, he’ll do his absolute best to make sure their paths never cross.

And that’s the downside of all of this: they haven’t met most of their friends. Or their friends don’t even exist yet. Cas is still in heaven, Eileen is probably in Ireland, Jody and Donna are cops, Kevin is in middle school. The Harvelles are still alive, at least.

(He has to coax himself out of thinking about Jack because if he starts that particular spiral he’ll never come back from it.)

Dean shows up with a newly-repaired Impala the next morning, apparently having worked through the night and now ready to hit the road. Once they’re driving, things feel normal. Whatever frustration Dean had with Sam seems to have been worked in amidst the repairs, which Sam is grateful for. He’s not sure he could handle openly fighting with Dean so soon after watching him die.

They’re about halfway to Sioux Falls when they get the call from one of their hunter contacts that someone caught wind of Bela Talbot in Monument, Colorado.

Sam hasn’t thought of Bela in a solid decade. He’s pretty sure she died, but she was in their lives so briefly he can’t even say for certain _what_ happened to her. And he definitely doesn’t recall anything about this tip, however much he strains to remember. It’s possible this is a a weird butterfly effect thing; he and Dean didn’t head to Bobby’s or crash the car last time around.

It isn’t until the next day when they’re standing in Bela’s hotel room, mystified that there’s no sign of her or the Colt, that Sam remembers it’s a trap.

The phone rings.

“Don’t answer that, we gotta go,” Sam says, grabbing Dean’s jacket and dragging him toward the door. They have minutes or probably less.

“Did you get a vision or something?” Dean asks, confused but letting Sam pull him along.

The moment they get into the hallway, the door to the stairwell at the far end opens, a half dozen cops rush through with guns drawn, and there’s nothing to be done about it but raise their hands and let themselves be shoved down to the floor.

Sam’s arms are wrenched uncomfortably behind his back and someone else snaps cuffs around his ankles too, just to be extra about it.

He stares at the floor, wondering how he could’ve forgotten this, until a pair of boots stop directly in front of them. Sam cranes his head up to see Victor Henriksen, smiling smugly. “Hi guys. It’s been awhile.”

He forgot Victor. Forgot they’re both the subject of an active manhunt at this point in time. _Shit._

He’s dragged upright along with Dean, and one of the cops chains their ankles together too, which is admittedly smart even if it seems like overkill. It makes for a shuffled walk to the squad car and even more jostling as they try to get into a bearable position in the back of the car.

Dean keeps giving him irritated looks, but Sam fixates on trying to think back to how this ends. It’s been so long. Henriksen—

This is how Henriksen dies. They’ll be swarmed by demons, manage to survive, and Lilith will show up to kill him and everyone else later.

When they’re dragged into the station, Sam recognizes the young woman at the front desk immediately. Nancy, the girl willing to die to save her neighbors. She locks eyes with Sam for only a moment, but Sam can’t help but smile at the sight of her. _I’m going to save you this time,_ he thinks, determined now.

He and Dean are shoved into a cell and settle shoulder to shoulder on the small cot in the cell.

“How did you know?” Dean asks, keeping his gaze straight ahead and away from Sam, voice low. “And if you knew, how did you not know _earlier?_ Say, five minutes earlier before we walked into that damn hotel?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Sam hedges. “It’s like old memories. Some parts stand out, some parts don’t. I remember how the rest of this goes, though. We’re going to get swarmed by demons, but Henriksen will come around once he realizes that monsters are real and that we’re not murderers. We all fight our way out together.”

“He will, huh? Does he blow me too?”

“Don’t think so,” Sam says, not missing a beat. “But if we stop Lilith from killing everyone like she did last time, maybe he’ll take you to dinner. Or buy you a drink or whatever you repressed guys do.”

“Sorry, Lilith? Like last time?”

Shit. “In my vision. Lilith is this demon, she’s— She’s the one who holds your contract. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you earlier.”

“None if this could’ve been mentioned earlier?”

“I should have. I’m sorry, it’s a lot.”

“You keep saying that, but I feel like you’ve told me three things about what you’ve seen. It’s not comforting. And now you’re telling me it’s going to go bad?”

“We can stop the bad parts from happening,” Sam says. “Please, trust—”

The door to the holding area creaks open and Sam flinches at the sudden noise. Dean gives him a sideways look, then directs his attention to Victor Henriksen strolling up their cell with a smile playing on the edges of his lips.

“You know what I’m trying to decide?” Henriksen muses.

“I don’t know, what? Whether Cialis will help you with your little condition?” Dean snarks.

“What to have for dinner,” Henriksen says thoughtfully. “Steak or lobster? What the hell, surf and turf. I got a lot to celebrate. I mean, after all, seeing you two in chains?”

“You kinky son of a bitch; we don’t swing that way.”

“That’s funny.”

“I wouldn’t bust out the melted butter just yet,” Dean says, clapping Sam on the shoulder. “My baby brother here is a psychic. Already knows how this whole thing goes down and it ends with us all walking out of here, best of friends.”

“Is that so?” Henriksen blinks at Sam and lets out a chuckle. “Alright. Wasn’t expecting that answer. I’ll give you boys points for originality at least.”

“Nothing you’ve tried so far with us has stuck,” Dean says. “And we’re not the bad guys here.”

“Right. Sam’s a psychic and you fight monsters.” Henriksen shakes his head. The sound of a helicopter descending breaks through the stillness of the jail and Henriksen smiles. “Your ride’s here, boys. Enjoy your last moments together; there’s two isolation cells in a supermax prison with your names on them.”

As Henriksen disappears back through the door, Sam goes over the sequence of events in his head again.

“The cop that comes in next is a demon,” Sam says under his breath. “He shoots you in the shoulder.”

“So, duck for cover?”

Sam nods. “If I can get the exorcism spell out, we should be okay.”

It’s a few minutes of waiting, but eventually the door opens again. A man in a suit enters, careful to close the door behind him.

“Sam and Dean Winchester. I’m deputy director—”

“Christo,” Sam says, just to be sure. The demon recoils and Sam starts rattling off the exorcism at lightning speed. The demon’s eyes flash black as he realizes what’s happening and takes aim at Dean with his gun, but Dean’s already dropping to the floor near the cot and taking shelter.

There’s a gunshot that goes wild as the demon full-body flinches through the exorcism and the bullet embeds in the wall rather than in Dean. The demon seems to realize he can’t win, offering a grin. “Sorry to cut this short boys.”

A cloud of smoke screams its way out of the director’s body before it thuds to the ground.

Henriksen and two others rush in, presumably at the sound of the gunshot and screaming, guns drawn. Sam drops to his knees immediately, hands above his head, and Dean sits up from the floor to do the same.

“We didn’t kill him,” Sam says. “He still has the gun on him, he shot at us. We didn’t do anything to him.”

“Check the body, he’s been dead for months,” Dean adds urgently.

One of the cops does, giving Henriksen a bewildered look when Dean’s claim appears to be true.

“Talk or I shoot,” Henriksen snaps.

“You won’t believe us,” Dean says.

“He was possessed.”

“Possessed. Right.” Henriksen shakes his head and turns to the other FBI agent. “Fire up the chopper, we’re taking them out now.”

“Yeah, do that,” Dean grunts.

One of the other cops starts talking into his walkie, but gets only static back. He frowns and then gets up to go investigate.

It’s a few tense moments and Henriksen and the local cops never holster their guns, instead keeping them trained on Sam and Dean. Then the walkie crackles. _“They’re dead. I think they’re all dead.”_

And then there’s a _boom_ , the unmistakable sound of an explosion that shakes the building. Henriksen and the remaining cop rush back into the lobby and a moment later, the lights flicker and then all burn out at once.

“This all track with your visions?” Dean glances at Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam nods. “We can still save a couple more people, I think. Henriksen’s gonna get possessed and shoot the sheriff.”

On cue, Henriksen storms back in. “What’s the plan? Kill everyone in the station, bust you two out?”

“Christo,” Sam says. Henriksen doesn’t flinch, but a furious look crosses over his face.

“Oh, so _I’m_ a demon now? Is that it? Let me tell you something, I don’t need to be a demon to be scary and you should be a lot more worried about me than whatever you think goes bump in the night.”

Henriksen storms out, still furious, but as he goes Sam spots Nancy peeking at them from around the corner. Her crucifix dangles from around her wrist and Sam realizes he’s messed up.

“We need holy water,” he says. “Shit. _Shit.”_

“What?”

“The secretary, Nancy? She has a crucifix,” Sam says. “We need holy water to fight Henriksen when he comes back possessed, or we’re screwed.”

Nancy is still watching them, big eyes, but Sam can’t think of anything to say to her. Dean’s not injured, there’s no empathy card to play, no sign of vulnerability to get her to come close. She won’t come near them.

“We’ll make it work,” Sam says. “The two of us can hold him, and if we can save the sheriff from getting shot, maybe he’ll help if he realizes something’s wrong with Henriksen.”

“You sure?” Dean asks. “Because we're deep in it here and there are so many ways this shit could go sideways.”

“Do you want to know the rest? It’ll be a bit before they come back, I can fill you in on everything.”

Dean gestures for him to continue and Sam lays out everything he can remember. Henriksen’s possession, Ruby’s appearance and the spell, the plan they ultimately decide on, and Lilith killing everyone anyway.

“So this Lilith chick,” Dean says slowly. “It’s kind of wild, right? She’s coming right for us. Never done that before. It’s like she’s put out a hit on us.”

Sam can’t stop himself from laughing.

“Take a compliment, Sammy. We’re so awesome, Hell personally wants us dead.”

_You have no idea._

When the door finally opens, Sam’s quick to his feet. The sheriff clutches the keys in hand and starts mumbling about getting them all out, opening their cell door and motioning for them to follow.

At which point Henriksen appears. Sam’s watching him like a hawk, but when he moves it’s just too fast. Sam charges to push the sheriff out of the way, but he’s off by a second, even knowing it’s coming, and the sheriff takes the bullet in the neck.

For a moment Sam’s frozen, watching the blood spill out onto the ground, until the sound of Dean yelling the first lines of the exorcism drags him back. He’s got Henriksen pinned and disarmed, but it’s not a good grip. The demon throws Dean off it, rolling them both over until Dean’s trapped underneath now, and it immediately grabs for his throat, choking off the exorcism.

Sam locks arms around the demon from behind, trying to pull it off Dean while picking up the exorcism where he left out, stuttering over his words. Dean’s trying the best he can to help, but the grip on his throat is doing too much damage and his movements are slowing.

Sam hears a commotion behind him, distantly aware the other cop and Nancy have come to see what’s happening, but he can’t think beyond _finish the exorcism_ and _get it off Dean_.

“Let him go!” the cop is shouting, but Sam’s almost done, he just needs a few more lines and—

He registers the _bang_ of the gun going off, but it doesn’t fully sink in that it’s hit him until a moment later when his right shoulder explodes in pain. He falls back to the floor, stunned, then remembers through the haze of pain that there’s still another line. He gasps it out, feeling desperate and half-mad, and it works. The demon freezes up, then turns over its shoulder toward Sam to snarl, “It’s too late. I already called them. They’re already coming and they’re going to kill _all_ of you.”

He throws his head back and a cloud of smoke billows out of his throat before he goes limp and collapses next to Dean.

“Dean?” Sam rasps, feeling the bullet in his shoulder now. Dean’s lying stunned, the bruises around his throat already purpling. He raises a shaky hand to one of the bruises and flinches at the touch.

“It’s bad,” he mouths, the words not quite forming in his throat. He pushes himself up against the wall with difficulty blinking a few times. There’s red spots in one of his eyes. His gaze falls on Sam’s shoulder and he scrambles over, peeling back the layers of Sam’s jacket to take a closer look.

“I’ll be okay, I think it went all the way through,” Sam says and Dean nods a short affirmative.

Henriksen gasps back to consciousness on the floor, eyes wide.

“Talk to him,” Dean mouths. Sam spares a glance behind them to the deputy who still has his gun out like he might start shooting again. Henriksen stares up at the pair, and at Sam and Dean.

“I shot the sheriff,” Henriksen says slowly, frowning.

“But you didn’t—” Dean starts, then chokes off in a grimace and tries to rub at his throat again, which makes the pain worse. 

“It’s not your fault,” Sam manages, trying to keep pressure on his shoulder and wondering if there’s a chance of getting that towel from Nancy now. “You were possessed, you couldn’t control anything.”

“Possessed like… _Possessed.”_

Sam nods, “That’s what it feels like.”

Henriksen seems to fully take Dean in and concern flashes across his face, “Your throat—”

“Yeah,” Dean winces. “You owe me… But if we want to survive, we have to work through this together. All of us.”

Henriksen nods, slowly. “Officer Amici, keys.”

Amici glances between the three of them, uncertain, but ultimately reaches to unclip the keys from his belt and hand them over. Henriksen undoes their chains.

“Alright, so how do we survive?” he asks.

It’s not ideal. Dean can still barely talk, but he’s gesturing and mouthing instructions at their little team as best he can. Nancy finds the first aid kit and looks between the two of them, uncertain who to offer it too first.

“His throat’s worse,” Sam says. “I’ll be fine.”

Dean wants to protest, but he of course can’t get the words out and Sam is already setting off to help Amici with putting salt down and drawing sigils at the entrances. By the time they’re done, Dean has apparently headed off to the Impala for supplies, leaving Sam to do another paranoid loop around the building.

Dean bursts in through the door, slamming it shut and leaping over the salt line. He hands one of their sawed-offs to Sam, and they form a cluster in the center of the building with the other three. The foundations of the building shake under their feet, sending stray coffee mugs and office supplies skittering off the counters and onto the floor. The clouds of smoke from the demons slam against the windows, rattling them but seemingly unable to get in.

It’s holding.

Glass shatters from somewhere near the front of the building. Sam jumps at the sound along with the others, but then remembers who it’ll be and thinks, _Right on time._

He’s not sure what he expected to feel at seeing Ruby again. He rarely thinks of her in this vessel, but it’s unmistakably her. Someone—Nancy, he thinks—is asking worriedly about who she is, if she’s a demon, and Sam waves them off.

“She’s here to help,” Sam says, because she is, for now.

“You gonna let me out?” Ruby asks and when Sam doesn’t move, she cocks her head at him, “Hello?”

He kneels down, never fully taking his eyes off her, and scrapes away a line in the devil’s trap.

“And they say chivalry’s dead.” She smirks as she strides past him into the building. “Anyone got a breath mint? Some guts splattered in my mouth while I was killing my way in here.”

“We don’t have the Colt and we’re not sacrificing any virgins for your spell, Ruby,” Sam says, following after her. “So go ahead and bail on us so we can get back to our actual plan.”

“I’m sorry?” Ruby wheels around on him, folding her arms. “Hold up. You lost _the Colt_?”

“Sorry,” Sam says with no real feeling behind it. “It’s going to end up with Crowley, not sure how long from now but soon, I’d imagine.”

“ _Crowley?”_ Ruby repeats, nose wrinkled in disgust. “How did Crowley get his hands on it?”

“Who’s Crowley?” Dean asks.

“Vision thing,” Sam says. “Like I said, we’re not doing your spell, Ruby. So stay and fight or get the hell out.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I know a lot of things that might surprise you,” Sam says. “But we can chat later. Go ahead and bail on us, I know you want to. We’ll be fine without you.”

“You can’t be serious. I’m willing to die for you and you just throw that away?”

“If it involves killing someone, yeah.”

“Who said anything about killing?” Henriksen asks, looking between them.

“No one,” Sam says. “Dean’s got a better plan that’ll work. Feel free to go, Ruby.”

“You gonna let me out at least?” she asks.

He does. They’re alone in the hall outside of the door a moment and she tilts her head at him, a smile playing at her lips. “How’d you know about the spell?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Sam says, kneeling again to scratch a path for her in the devil’s trap.

“I would, actually.”

Sam stands back up, aware of how close they are again. “Ask me the next time you see me.”

“Fine,” she says, giving him a once over as she steps through the trap and up to the door. She glances over her shoulder. “If you actually save all these people? Consider me impressed. If you don’t...”

“You can say ‘I told you so,’” Sam says and Ruby gives him a little half-smirk as she steps through the doorway.

The plan goes off without a hitch, at least at first. They let the demons inside, then lock them in. Sam is struggling with his shoulder, and Dean with his bruised throat, but they’ve been through worse and they hold up. Henriksen flips on the exorcism recording and the demons smoke out.

It’s as simple as that. The possessed people clear out of the building pretty quickly, ushered out by Henriksen and Amici who concoct some excuse about a gas leak.

Sam insists they wait until everyone is gone, because he needs, desperately, to make sure everyone leaves before the end of the day.

“I’ll make sure you two are written up as having been in the chopper when it exploded,” Henriksen says, noticing them still hovering. “You should get out of here before the other feds show up.”

“You have to leave too,” Sam says. “Everyone in the station. There’s a worse demon on her way here, looking for us. She’s going to blow up this station and everyone in it, so you’re smart, you’ll get the hell out of town. Out of the state would be better. Keep the charms on, salt your doors and windows. Just lay low as long as you can.”

“If something weird does show up, call us,” Dean adds, scrawling the number of one of their burner phones on a notepad.

“Thanks,” Henriksen says tentatively. “I’ll get the other two and make sure we’re all heading out.”

They wait in the parking lot until they see the trio emerge from the station and head to their respective cars. Nancy gives them a little wave over the top of a small box of items she must’ve grabbed from her desk before leaving.

“I hope she’s okay,” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Dean rasps.

“How’s your neck?”

“Well it wasn’t the throat-related action with Henriksen I was promised,” Dean says hoarsely. “I’ll be fine once the swelling goes down.”

“You sure you don’t want to go to a hospital? You’ve got, like, blood vessels popped in your eyes. It’s pretty gnarly looking.”

Dean shakes his head, “Bobby can look me over.”

“That’s ten hours from here.”

“Better hit the road then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on tumblr @archiesweirdfantasy
> 
> thanks to havvke on tumblr for beta-ing


	3. three - devil's in the details

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam takes a trip down memory lane.

Bobby seems bemused by their presence when they show up late in the night, but makes room for them on the couch and in his spare room all the same because he’s Bobby.

There’s something about waking up in the morning to light streaming in through old curtains that feels right. The bunker was home, sure, but it was also a never-ending series of flashbacks if he was in the wrong mindset and happened to glance at a particular column or section of wall at a certain angle. For every movie night and family meal, there’s someone dying or a past torturer making a reappearance.

They’ll get back into it, eventually. It’s too useful to leave abandoned, but for now Sam enjoys tip-toeing through Bobby’s kitchen in his socks. He helps himself to a bowl of cereal, then starts off in search of a blank notebook and pen. Looking through the old volumes of lore on the shelves makes him realize how much they lost when Bobby’s house burned down. There’s decades of this stuff, collected from all over the country.

“You want coffee, kid?”

Sam flinches at the sudden voice, sloshing milk from his cereal bowl down his front.

“Just me,” Bobby says, raising his hands. “Guess Dean wasn’t exaggerating when he said you’d been jumpy the last few days.”

“Sorry,” Sam says. “Coffee would be great.”

Bobby throws a kitchen towel in his direction. Sam dabs at the milk on his shirt absently as he keeps glancing through the shelves until he spots a thin, leather journal that looks newer than the other volumes. Inside, the pages are blank and unlined.

“Can I have this?” Sam asks, holding up the book.

“Sure,” Bobby shrugs. “Think Rufus left it here a few months back.”

The coffee pot gurgles and buzzes in the background while Sam starts scribbling down a timeline of memories from this year.

Lilith is his biggest concern. She might be sending other demons after them now, but ultimately she’s the one who’s there, sicing her hellhounds on Dean as the clock strikes midnight, laughing from Ruby’s body.

On that note, he hasn’t fully decided what he’s doing about Ruby. She’s playing the long game for Lucifer, but she knows things and she might be their best shot at being able to kill Lilith. She was the only reason he could kill Lilith last time, they just need to speed up the timeline. They’ll need her knife too, until they can get their hands on an angel blade. He adds her to a list of tentative allies, with a large asterisk next to her name.

“This all stuff from your visions?” Bobby asks. He hands Sam his coffee and peers over his shoulder as Sam shades in the details of a sigil he picked up from Rowena. “You sure it’s not some demon playing mind games with you?”

“People keep saying that,” Sam says.

“People might have a point.”

They don’t, but Sam’s still not sure he’s ready to unleash the concept of time travel on Bobby or even if he and Dean would believe it at this point. Sam looks up from the journal. “I’m not going to ignore the best chance we have at saving him. It’s not demons playing mind games, I’d know.”

“You _don’t_ know that son. And there’s a right way and a wrong way—”

“This _is_ the right way,” Sam dismisses. “I know what’s going to happen and I can stop it. Three people are alive that weren’t before, I can do the same with Dean.”

Bobby doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that and gives a frustrated, dismissive shrug as he turns back to the kitchen.

Sam resumes writing and sketching out a timeline: chain reactions, causes and effects. If they can stop Dean from going to hell, none of the apocalypse happens. Dad’s already out, which means there’s no righteous man in the Winchester bloodline left to—

Except Adam. But they can save him and his mom. They’ve got a whole year before the ghouls call and as long as they stop that and make sure he’s not in danger of making a crossroad deal, there’s no one to crack the first seal. And if that’s true, then there’s no apocalypse.

There’s still Chuck to deal with and of course Abaddon will make her appearance in about five years, but that’s a long way off. They can spend their time getting ready for those fights when they come. Get the bunker, get their allies together. Nothing to worry about.

Of course, all of this only works with the assumption that Sam got pulled back to the normal 2008 he remembers, and this isn’t a dream or an alternate reality. Not that he’s sure how to go about proving that if that was the case.

For now, he starts underlining priorities with the time travel assumption: Kill Lilith. Save Dean. Save Adam. Find a key to the Bunker. Get some holy oil in case of emergency. It’s a good to-do list. Achievable goals; three out of five he’s already done before.

“How’s the thinking going?” Dean asks, emerging from the spare room with a yawn. He's less hoarse than he was the night before, but the finger-shaped bruises on his throat have turned a harsh purple color.

“Good,” Sam says, trying to cover his alarm at how bad Dean looks. “I think I know what I know and we just have to kill Lilith.”

“Okay,” Dean pours himself a cup of coffee. “How do we kill a demon? Swipe Ruby’s knife?”

Sam shakes his head, “Lilith’s too powerful. We’ll have to think of something else, but I’ve got some ideas and there’s lore we can look into.”

Dean settles down on the couch next to Sam and tries to peek over his shoulder at the notebook. Sam slams it shut.

Dean holds up his hands defensively, “Dude… Come on.”

“I don't know how much things will change if you know everything too. And there’s a lot that could go wrong if we don’t get this right.”

“Hell is bad, I get it.”

_Worse than Hell, actually._

“Alright,” Bobby says, coming back in from the kitchen. “If we’re gonna trust your sixth sense, we should get you checked out. I called up a psychic friend near here. She can give you a look over, see if it’s coming from somewhere demon-y or if they’re real visions.”

“Perfect, then we’ll know. No waiting around for the other shoe to drop.” The finality in Dean’s voice is straight out of their childhood, when Dean would try to impose a curfew or force him to finish his homework. Sam knows there’s no possibility of arguing his way out even if he wanted to. And he doesn’t, really. It might get Dean off his back, and maybe Pamela will have some insight.

They drive over separately and Dean’s humming along to the radio, clearly chipper at the prospect of getting some answers. Sam is just hoping that he can convince Pamela to get rid of Bobby and Dean. He wants to explain properly before she lets something slip that’ll require more answers than he’s ready to give.

It is undeniably great to see her again, alive and with her eyes still intact. She grins broadly at Bobby as she opens the door, then eyes Dean over, exchanging a quick flirty barb with each of them. When she turns to Sam, her expression fluctuates between concern and surprise.

“You’ve got a lot going on in there, Sam,” she says, eyes raking over him. It’s not the same look she gave Dean, this is different. Clinical.

“Something like that,” Sam says.

“Well come on in,” she opens the door and the three of them follow her inside and around a corner to her living room.

The moment they’re all seated, Dean asks, “So is he okay?”

“I’m fine. Right?” Sam looks to Pamela. “Nothing demonic.”

Pamela glances at Dean, then back at Sam, “Nothing I’m picking up off-hand. I ouija’d my way through a few spirits, nobody seems to think there’s any extra weird being done to Sam at the moment. I want to do a closer reading, but that’ll involve me really getting in your head.”

He’s not sure he wants her _entirely_ in his head, but she died for them once, the least he can do is give her a—

“What was that about me dying?”

He’d let his mind wander a little too much. “It’s just a possibility,” Sam says quickly. “I can show you.”

“Wait, you’ve seen her in your visions?” Dean turns to Sam, alarmed. “And she _dies_?”

“Sorry; there’s a lot going on in my head right now. Can we just put me under already?” Sam looks pleadingly at Pamela.

Dean gets cleared off the couch so Sam can lie down while Pamela kneels next to him and counts backward from twenty in a soothing voice. His mind is still racing with what he needs to tell her and when she gets to zero, he’s pretty sure nothing happened. He still feels wide awake.

“I don’t think it worked,” Sam mutters.

“Oh?” Pamela asks. Sam opens his eyes and realizes that while, yes, he is still lying on the couch and feels the same, they’re not in her house anymore.

They’re in the bunker.

Just the two of them, so it must all be happening in his mind.

“Nice digs you got here,” Pamela comments, getting to her feet looking around. “Where is this?”

Sam stands, a strange mix of emotions hitting him at once. “Uh, an underground bunker in Kansas. Dean and I moved in here in 2013.”

A semi-transparent Dean— older Dean, _his_ Dean— appears at the table. He doesn’t say anything or even seem to notice they’re there, just takes a swig of the beer in his hand and looks content.

“Yeah, that’s how this me-in-your-head stuff works. You think it, I see it,” Pamela says. “Also 2013 is five years from now.”

“Yeah, those visions I’ve been having aren’t really visions. I’m sort of from the future. Or my mind is, I think. Physically, I’m twenty-five again but I vividly remember being thirty-seven and way more fucked up.”

“Huh. Okay, Scott Bakula,” Pamela folds her arms. “I can buy that.”

“Really?”

“Makes more sense than anything I would’ve guessed. Calling you an ‘old soul’ felt like an understatement,” Pamela’s eyes narrow, concentrating on whatever wisps of thoughts she’s picking up from him. “You’ve got a lot more years than thirty-seven in your head.”

The edges of the room flicker with a faint red tinge and Sam closes his eyes, pushing the memories away, “Time works differently in Hell. But you _really_ don’t want to see that part, so can we just try to figure out what happened to me?”

“I don’t know,” Pamela has her head tilted at him when he opens his eyes again. “This isn’t a simple ‘ask the spirits’ type of thing. You are a temporal fish out of water and I have no idea who scooped you out of your tank and put you back in this particular stream.”

Light flashes up against a wall and displays a shadow of wings. Sam thinks there’s a half-image of Gabriel accompanying them, but it’s gone too fast.

“Angels,” Pamela laughs incredulously. “Seriously?”

“Time travel is sort of their thing. There’s one angel, specifically, but he should be dead so I don’t know. It could also just be a dream or a djinn or— I don’t know, a vivid hallucination I’m having while bleeding out next to Dean in the—”

The bunker flickers out of view for a moment and the barn appears around them. Dean’s impaled on that stupid hook a foot in front of him and—

Then he’s back in the bunker with Pamela.

“Is there any way to prove that I’m actually here?” Sam asks.

“If it’s a dream, then you’re in a dream within a dream so there’s some layers we’ve got going on here.”

“Very Inception,” Sam agrees. When Pamela gives him a blank look, he remembers. “It’s a movie that hasn’t come out yet.”

“Looking forward to it,” she nods. “If this is an illusion, I’m gonna be pretty pissed about not being real, but I’m not sure how I’ll be able to help you. Have you seen anything, I don’t know, _off_ that might clue you into this being fake somehow?”

“No, but I know things aren’t always what they look like.”

“Anything _could_ be a dream or an illusion. Unless something feels wrong, I’d just assume it’s real. And from my perspective, outside of the extra years, you seem okay. No weird presence, no demonic tinge. A little psychic, but still just you. So long as we’re here… Do you want me to help you sort through anything? You’re working on a way to save your brother, right? Maybe I can help you look through some old memories.”

“You can do that?” Sam asks. When Pamela nods, he thinks for a moment, then says, “I’m trying to figure out what to do about this demon. Ruby.”

The dark-haired version of Ruby appears in the bunker, leaning against one of the columns with her arms folded and her head cocked to the side.

“Hey, Sam,” she says, voice low and a little too _come-hither_ for Sam’s taste.

“I think she’s the only way to save Dean, but she’s… she’s not on our side. She’s pretending to be and she saved our asses a few times before, but she’s playing us so she can jailbreak Lucifer from Hell.”

“Let’s go exploring then,” she says, nodding toward the main hallway of the bunker. They walk together, and Sam notices Ruby following behind them.

“She’s on your mind,” is all Pamela gives as an explanation. They stop at the first door, which she swings open for them. It’s dark inside, but Pamela reaches in and flips on the switch, and immediately Sam recognizes the scene at the first time Ruby saved his life. Not much to it, really. When Sam glances back, the Ruby behind them smiles fondly, although she doesn't say anything.

Pamela moves on to the door, and then the next. Each one a different memory. Some of the rooms stay a little dim, even after Pamela’s turned on the light. Some don’t need the light turned on at all, like the memory of Ruby gorging herself on french fries for some inexplicable reason.

There’s other pieces of pertinent information from this early Ruby though. She’d been a witch who allegedly remembered what being human was like, and she claimed she could train Sam fast enough to kill Lilith in thirty hours. That had to have been a lie. She probably figured out that Dean would let that happen over his dead body.

So it does happen over his dead body.

The first time Ruby offered demon blood to him, he told her to fuck all the way off. The second time she didn’t take no for an answer, just kept coaxing him and told him it’d make him strong enough to get revenge, told him it’d make him feel better too. And he’d been so tired and she was all he had anymore, so why fight it?

He can sense Pamela’s discomfort next to him as they watch this particular scene.

Pamela starts to reach for the door, but he catches her wrist. She flinches back, which feels to Sam a bit like being slapped.

“I need to see it,” he says quietly. He needs to remember so he doesn’t make these mistakes all over again. He watches himself drink blood for the first time and the second time and the third time. Pamela stands back and closes her eyes when they arrive at the door for the first time he drank from a demon who wasn’t Ruby and wasn’t willing and screamed at him while he lapped blood its arm before he exorcised it. The girl who’d been possessed ran away from him screaming, but he’d saved her so what did it matter how she looked at him? He was always going to be a monster, at least this way he was doing something good with it.

“How did you convince yourself you could do this without something bad happening?” Pamela asks. “Sam, this is— This is _fucked_.”

“I didn’t care. I was desperate and it was helping people,” Sam says. “I paid for it, trust me.”

The hallway gets that red tinge again and Sam closes his eyes and takes a steady to breath to push the memories back again.

Once Dean comes back, the rest is easy to remember, familiar days he’s tormented himself over, wondering if things would’ve been different if he’d trusted Dean earlier.

“This is it,” Sam says quietly, when they open the door that leads into the church. It plays out like he thinks it would, except two sentences catch his ear that he didn’t remember: _“You didn’t need a feather to fly, dumbo. You had it in you the whole time.”_

The rest of the scene plays out. Pamela closes the door firmly. “That was—”

“Please don’t tell Dean.”

“I won’t. But you should,” Pamela says. “This was clearly a long time ago for you. I’m incredibly disturbed by it all, but it’s deep in your past. You’re not that person anymore, now you’re basically just guilt and shame wrapped in flannel.”

 _Not entirely inaccurate,_ Sam thinks.

“What about that part you latched onto?” Pamela asks. “The ‘you didn’t need a feather to fly’ part. What did she mean by that?”

“That I didn’t need to use demon blood, I think. Which means I could kill Lilith without using again.”

“But you’d have to talk to her. And if you do that, you can’t let her talk you into anything you can’t undo. There’s some dark shit you can’t walk back and if by some miracle you’ve been given the second chance to avoid it, don’t make the same mistakes time.”

“I won’t,” Sam vows.

“You ready to wake up?”

Sam glances at the memory-Ruby still standing in the hall behind them, watching him.

“Yeah.”

And then he’s back on the couch in Pamela’s house, eyes flying open.

“That was fast,” Dean’s voice drifts over to him. “What happened?”

Pamela sits back on her heels on the floor next to Sam. “Clean bill of health, no demons. Just some really strong psychic stuff that’s starting to come out of hibernation again.”

“Seriously?” Dean glances at Bobby, who looks equally confused. “That can't be right.”

“Maybe it came from someplace weird, maybe it was demonic once upon a time,” Pamela says, “but it doesn't look any different to me. You can use it for all sorts of demonic garbage, but you don't have. Sometimes you're just psychic.”

“Psychic Sammy 2: Electric Boogaloo, sans the demon shit,” Dean muses. “I guess.”

“Speaking from experience, it comes in handy,” Pamela says. “Unless you think I'm a monster.”

“No, no,” Dean says quickly. “You feel okay about it?”

Sam doesn't know what the perfect thing to say is, but he tries for what he hopes will work, “I know you won't let me go off the deep end. And maybe we can save some more people. We already got Henriksen and the others. Maybe this is a way to do the right thing.”

Dean frowns, but nods. Sam isn't sure how much he got through, but he's not dismissing him outright which seems like some kind of victory.

Once they get back to Bobby’s, Dean starts looking for a new hunt and when Sam insists he needs to clear his head after the mind walk with Pamela, Dean begrudgingly allows him to take the Impala. They feel like good signs so far. Maybe he can pull this off.

He drives a good twenty miles out of town, finds an empty barn off the side of the road, and summons Ruby.

“A phone call would work just as well,” she says. “Nice summoning work, by the way. Very witchy. Where’d you pick it up?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Sam says. “I told you, I know a lot more than you’d think. Like demon blood. And I know that it’s bullshit and I can learn how to use my powers without it.”

“I’m sorry?” Ruby lets out a startled laugh. Sam lets her sweat it out and she narrows her eyes, sizing him up. “You’re not going to tell me how you know any of this, are you?”

“I want you to teach me everything I need to save Dean. The telekinesis, exorcisms with my mind, killing demons. All of it.”

“Someone really gave you the whole sneak preview, huh?” Ruby cocks her head to the side, “Demon blood works like training wheels. You don’t need it, but it stops you from getting hurt when you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I think I can handle some skinned knees.”

“Can you handle your head exploding?”

Sam swallows. “I can’t handle being a junkie. And I don’t want my brother to think I’ve gone darkside because I’m drinking blood. We both know that won’t go over well.”

“His internal organs liquefying because you don’t know what you’re doing won’t go over well either.”

“Then I won’t practice around him.” The suggestion of keeping another secret settles uncomfortably in his stomach.

“You want to risk hurting innocent people? You want to do mental exorcisms because you want to save people. Blowing their heads off is a funny way of doing that.”

“What if we go slow?”

“No,” Ruby says, then presses her lips together in thought for a moment. “Okay, I can give you _one_ compromise. Take it or leave it, up to you. We start off on demon blood and then we wean you off. Three months, give or take.”

“Three months?”

“Yeah. I’m assuming we’ll be doing microdoses the whole time so you’re not worried about withdrawals?”

Sam nods, hesitant.

“So it’ll take longer, but after three months, we can be working fully without it. That should give you at least a month to practice keeping the hellhounds at bay when they come for big brother. It’s not perfect and it won’t guarantee you anything, just so we’re clear. But if you’re going to insist, this is how we do it.”

It’s not what he wants. It’s not what he’d talked about with Pamela, in fact it’s a lot more like the doors he’d watched as a warning of what not to do. Microdosing demon blood can’t be much better than just drinking a normal amount. It’s still demon blood.

But this is the tried and true method, he survived last time, and he knows what the absolute wrong moves are. Three months on, then a month or two off and he’ll be strong enough to save Dean. It’s worth it. It’s not the same mistake, he can stay smarter than this.

Ruby slides her knife out from where it’s strapped to her thigh.

“What, now?” The fluttering of anxiety in his stomach has leapt up to this throat now.

“If you want to get the demon blood part over with, yeah, we start now. I’ll give you enough to last just until I find some friends to practice on. Still be a small dose, nothing to worry about.”

She makes a shallow cut on her wrist and Sam feels a decade-old twinge the moment he sees the crimson spill over pale skin.

“Well?”

Ruby draws him to her like a magnet. He kneels at the edge of the devil’s trap to scratch out a line of paint with the tip of his knife and her boots come into view a few paces away from him. As he raises his gaze to meet hers, looking down on him, he remembers what it was like to love her. Giving in to every natural instinct, but also every worst part of himself. He never had to think, everything else dissolved until there was only blood and mission between them.

She reaches out to rest a hand in his hair and he shakes it off, “No. We’re not doing that.”

“Okay,” she says softly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Let’s just do this,” Sam says, as if he has a chance of regaining control when he’s still on his knees in front of her.

She turns her forearm outward, an offering of the blood that trickles down to her wrist and off her fingers.

It’s not what he wanted, but he’s learned so much in the last twelve years and none of it ever pointed toward there being another way to kill a white-eyed demon. It won’t be like last time.

This is just a temporary fix, he tells himself as he draws Ruby’s arm to his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to naivety on tumblr for beta-ing

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [archiesweirdfantasy!](https://archiesweirdfantasy.tumblr.com/)


End file.
